Lil Nas X says when he was growing up Montero Lamar Hill in conservative Lithia Springs, Georgia, he vowed to never come out as gay.
"The honest truth is, I planned to die with the secret,” he told The Guardian. “But that changed when I became Lil Nas X.”
The rapper, now 20, said he wanted to stay in the closet because he saw openly gay teens at his high school being bullied and subjected to homophobia.
Last June, while his unlikely global hit “Old Town Road” was smashing chart records, Lil Nas X tweeted: “Some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone fwm no more … Deadass thought I made it obvious.”
He told The Guardian there was “nothing really holding me back anymore.”
Nas acknowledged not all of his LGBT fans can come out as easily. “I don’t want to encourage them to do something they don’t 100% want to do. Especially in, like, middle school or high school. Because it’s just super hard,” he said.
“It’s easier for me. I’m not depending on anybody. There’s no one who’s going to kick me out of the house – nobody to start treating me s**tty.”
The rapper said his family, which includes seven siblings, never speaks to him about his sexuality or his dating life. He hasn’t spoken to his mother “for a long time.”
Nas also revealed that he turned down a request to appear in a campaign video for openly gay former Democratic presidential nominee Pete Buttigieg.
“I don’t want to base my support off, ‘Oh, you’re gay, I’m going to support you,’” he explained. “Yeah, you’re gay. But I don’t know everything you’re planning when you’re running the entire country.”